This Man Survived In An Air Bubble Underwater For 60 Hours After His Boat Sank Near Nigeria

Harrison Okene, 29, poses
for a photograph after an interview with Reuters outside an hotel
in Nigeria's oil city of Warri June 12, 2013.REUTERS/Joe Brock

WARRI, Nigeria (Reuters) - After two days
trapped in freezing cold water and breathing from an air bubble
in an upturned tugboat under the
ocean, Harrison Okene was sure he was going
to die. Then a torch light pierced the darkness.

Ship's cook Okene, 29, was on
board the Jascon-4 tugboat when it capsized on May 26 due to
heavy Atlantic ocean swells around 30 km (20 miles) off the coast
of Nigeria, while stabilizing an oil
tanker filling up at a Chevron platform.

Of the 12 people on board, divers recovered 10 dead bodies while
a remaining crew member has not been found.

Somehow Okene survived,
breathing inside a four foot high bubble of air as it shrunk in
the waters slowly rising from the ceiling of the tiny toilet and
adjoining bedroom where he sought refuge, until two South African
divers eventually rescued him.

"I was there in the water in total darkness just thinking it's
the end. I kept thinking the water was going to fill up the room
but it did not," Okene said, parts of his skin peeling
away after days soaking in the salt water.

"I was so hungry but mostly so, so thirsty. The salt water took
the skin off my tongue," he said. Seawater got into his mouth but
he had nothing to eat or drink throughout his ordeal.

At 4:50 a.m. on May 26, Okene says he was in the toilet when he
realized the tugboat was beginning to turn over. As water rushed
in and the Jascon-4 flipped, he forced open the metal door.

"As I was coming out of the toilet it was pitch black so we were
trying to link our way out to the water tidal (exit
hatch)," Okene told
Reuters in his home town of Warri, a city in Nigeria's oil-producing Niger Delta.

"Three guys were in front of me and suddenly water rushed in full
force. I saw the first one, the second one, the third one just
washed away. I knew these guys were dead."

What he didn't know was that he would spend the next two and a
half days trapped under the sea praying he would be found.

Turning away from his only exit, Okene was swept along a narrow passageway
by surging water into another toilet, this time adjoining a
ship's officers cabin, as the overturned boat crashed onto the
ocean floor. To his amazement he was still breathing.

FISH FEASTED ON THE DEAD

Okene, wearing only his
underpants, survived around a day in the four foot square toilet,
holding onto the overturned washbasin to keep his head out of the
water.

He built up the courage to open the door and swim into the
officer's bedroom and began pulling off the wall paneling to use
as a tiny raft to lift himself out of the freezing water.

He sensed he was not alone in the darkness.

"I was very, very cold and it was black. I couldn't see
anything," says Okene,
staring into the middle distance.

"But I could perceive the dead bodies of my crew were nearby. I
could smell them. The fish came in and began eating the bodies. I
could hear the sound. It was horror."

What Okene didn't know
was a team of divers sent by Chevron and the ship's
owners, West African Ventures, were
searching for crew members, assumed by now to be dead.

Then in the afternoon of May 28, Okene heard them.

"I heard a sound of a hammer hitting the vessel. Boom, boom,
boom. I swam down and found a water dispenser. I pulled the water
filter and I hammered the side of the vessel hoping someone would
hear me. Then the diver must have heard a sound."

Divers broke into the ship and Okene saw light from a head torch of
someone swimming along the passageway past the room.

"I went into the water and tapped him. I was waving my hands and
he was shocked," Okene said, his relief still visible.

He thought he was at the bottom of the sea, although the company
says it was 30 meters below.

The diving team fitted Okene with an oxygen mask, diver's suit
and helmet and he reached the surface at 19:32, more than 60
hours after the ship sank, he says.

Okene says he spent another
60 hours in a decompression chamber where his body pressure was
returned to normal. Had he just been exposed immediately to the
outside air he would have died.

The cook describes his extraordinary survival story as a
"miracle" but the memories of his time in the watery darkness
still haunt him and he is not sure he will return to the sea.

"When I am at home sometimes it feels like the bed I am sleeping
in is sinking. I think I'm still in the sea again. I jump up and
I scream," Okene said,
shaking his head.

"I don't know what stopped the water from filling that room. I
was calling on God. He did it. It was a miracle."

(Editing by Tim Cocks and Giles Elgood)

Read the original article on Reuters. Copyright 2013. Follow Reuters on Twitter.